


got an army of lions (to ruin everything)

by RakshaTheDemon



Series: salt and ashes [6]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:27:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28082412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RakshaTheDemon/pseuds/RakshaTheDemon
Summary: When the crew of the Yinglong discovers Azula's birthday is coming up, clearly their littlest firebender needs a surprise party. What could possibly go wrong?
Series: salt and ashes [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1845337
Comments: 34
Kudos: 206





	got an army of lions (to ruin everything)

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime between _the sun don't shine underground_ and _something like a storm_

Toph is not very good at Go.

In her defense, she’s only been playing for a few weeks now. After she joined the ship and Koji had used coal dust to mark the walls for her, they figured out a similar method could be used to mark the lines on a game board. And unlike that pai sho game Uncle and Jee are always playing, which apparently can have dozens of unique tiles, Go just needs two types of pieces. Easy enough to tell apart if you just make them out of two different types of stone.

So now Azula has been teaching her to play. And winning most of the time. Well, okay, all of the time. But Toph is stubborn and determined to figure this out. Of course, right now she also has an ulterior motive for wanting to keep Smoky busy playing games, but that just means she’s being efficient.

“Sailor Yuka’s been to the infirmary every day for the past week,” Azula says, bringing Toph back to the conversation they’d been having. “But she doesn’t show any signs of injury.”

This conversation has been going on for a few days now, ever since Azula started noticing some of the crew acting strangely. And she’s not wrong, people _have_ been acting odd. Because as it turns out, people on this boat are _really bad_ at keeping secrets.

Like, say, planning a surprise birthday party for their littlest firebender.

“Maybe she hides it well, like you do.”

“I don’t hide things.”

Toph scoffs. “Yeah, and I’m a waterbender. What about that time you broke your finger and didn’t say anything for a day and a half?”

“Doctor Jian said it was just a fracture. And I didn’t _hide_ it; it just wasn’t relevant to anything.”

“This is why the doc has gray hair, you know.”

“His hair is black.”

“Says you.”

Azula pauses midway through moving a piece. She makes a small sound halfway between a groan and a laugh before placing her stone in an annoyingly good position.

The next few minutes pass in relative silence as Toph has to actually pay attention to the game if she doesn’t want to just _give_ Smoky a victory. She can suddenly see how the pieces that Azula seemed to just be scattering over the board are actually part of a trap that she’s been stumbling right into.

“It’s not just Sailor Yuka,” Azula says, breaking Toph’s concentration. “Several people keep acting...strange. You still haven’t noticed?”

“People on this boat are _always_ acting strange.” Hey, it’s not a lie. Toph considers her options and places a stone in what she hopes is the least-worst one. “Your move.”

Azula picks up a stone but doesn’t place it, just sits turning it over in her hand, contemplating something. “I think,” she says finally, “Sailor Fai is afraid of me?”

 _That_ actually makes Toph snort out loud, because of _course_ he’s afraid of her. The man is practically frightened by the sound of his own footsteps. But then Azula freezes in that way she does when she’s confronted by something unexpected and so pulls deeper into herself, and Toph realizes that was probably the wrong way to react.

“Sorry, Smoky. It’s just funny because of course he’s scared of you? I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”

Azula raises her shoulders in a tiny shrug. She puts her stone down next to the board. “I think I don’t want to play anymore? I’m going on deck.”

Azula gets up from her seat, and for a terrible moment Toph worries that she’s actually screwed up worse than she thought and now her friend is seriously mad.

“Scared you were about to lose?” The joke sounds forced, even to her.

But then Smoky lets out a quiet laugh, and something inside Toph unclenches.

“In your dreams, maybe. Come on, let’s go.”

Toph waits until Azula turns to leave before flicking a stone into the back of her head.

* * *

It feels strange to be on land after so many weeks at sea. Yuka hadn’t been able to get shore leave at the last port (stupid pirates showing up just when her watch was supposed to end) so she’s been on the water longer than usual. It takes her a few moments to adjust to the not-movement of the solid ground beneath her feet, and longer still to adjust to the quiet where the ocean’s song used to be as she gets further from the shore.

After a lifetime spent trying to avoid the water’s pull, who would have thought that one day Yuka would find it’s loss strange?

“You seem deep in thought,” Fai says as he joins her.

She’s not sure she wants to try and explain her water-related feelings (could she even explain?) so she decides to go for the obvious topic of discussion. She glances back over her shoulder to check that Azula isn’t within earshot. The princess is apparently caught up in a very animated conversation with Toph. (Well, animated on one side, anyway).

She pitches her voice low to be safe. “I still can’t believe _you_ were the only one who knew about her birthday.”

“It isn’t exactly a _secret_. She’s _royalty_. Technically it qualifies as a national holiday. Or, well, it _did_.”

“Yeah, except _nobody_ pays attention to that. _General Iroh_ didn’t even know.” Yuka shakes her head. “I can’t believe it took me this long to find out you’re one of those people who gets all starstruck about the royal family.”

“I’m not!”

“Right, so if I asked you what Prince Zuko’s favorite food is, you wouldn’t be able to tell me?” When he doesn’t answer, Yuka shoves him in the shoulder. “You _do_ know! You’re totally obsessed!”

“It’s my sister, ok? She’s fascinated by the royal family, and thinks Azula is all cool and mysterious since she basically never made public appearances. I didn’t _want_ to learn this stuff, I had no choice.”

His tone is the same mix of exasperation and fondness he always has when he talks about his sister. And no matter how often she hears it, there’s always a part of Yuka that’s just a little bit surprised, that has to be reminded that this is how family is _supposed_ to be.

(She tries to imagine trusting any of her siblings enough to tell them about, well, _anything_. Tries to imagine a universe where they’d care to know more about her than the simple fact of her existence. Might as well try to bend the stars while she’s at it.)

“You know, she’s probably losing her mind over me being on the _Yinglong_ ,” he continues. “...And probably revising all her theories about the princess being some kind of reclusive artist.”

“No wonder you went to Toph for gift ideas.”

It’s a good thing he had, honestly, because that’s how they discovered that no one else on the ship had any idea the princess had a birthday coming up. Even General Iroh was unaware, and doesn’t _that_ just speak volumes about what their relationship used to be like?

Unfortunately Toph didn’t exactly have any more idea what Azula would want than the rest of them, so she and Fai are resigned to wandering through the local shops and hoping to find something suitable. It takes a few hours, but in the end they both manage to find gifts that they’re pretty sure the princess will like. Probably. Hopefully.

(Honestly Yuka has no idea what she’s doing here, but the princess literally never goes anywhere without the last gift Yuka gave her, and that was just something she handed over on a stupid whim. So maybe her instincts aren’t totally off?)

“I don’t know,” Fai says, looking down at his own purchase, “maybe I should’ve gone for the other one? I’m not sure she’ll actually like this.”

They’ve already been through this conversation six times. Yuka is about to remind him of that when a familiar shape wearing a _very_ familiar scarf steps out of a shop next to them. She hits Fai on the arm and nods in toward Princess Azula who, yep, has definitely seen them. Fai quickly shoves the gift into his bag as Azula walks over.

“Hello Sailor Fai, Sailor Yuka.” The princess nods to each of them in turn.

“Uh, hi, hello,” Yuka says because she has apparently forgotten how to do normal human speech. “Enjoying the town?”

Azula nods. “You have been shopping?” she nods toward the bags they’re both holding. Fai immediately moves his to behind his back, because _that’s_ not weird at all.

“Yup,” he says, his voice pitched just a little too high. “Just having a nice fun shopping spree. Needed to get some, uh, candles? Scented ones. For the komodo-rhinos. They really love their...scents.”

Azula stares at them both for a moment, and _spirits_ has she always had that piercing gaze?

“They like...scented candles?” Azula asks.

“Oh, sure,” Fai says. “I mean they’ll probably want to eat them but, uh, that’s why I’m there, right? To keep them from eating the candles that I definitely bought them. Because that is absolutely what I have in this bag. Candles, for the komodo-rhinos.”

Yuka is going to die, and it is going to be Fai’s fault.

“But enough about what we’ve been doing,” she says because someone needs to stop this disaster, “what’ve you been up to? You’re, uh, not with Toph?”

The princess shakes her head. “She wanted to work on her earthbending. I was going to train with her but Uncle Iroh and Sifu Rùfen both said I need to take some time for myself and not work so hard.” Her brow furrows a little as she repeats the comment, like she can’t understand how overworking could be a thing.

“Well those two definitely know what they’re talking about,” Yuka agrees. Fai nods enthusiastically beside her.

Azula nods once. Then she tilts her head consideringly. “You’re healing well?”

There’s a moment of confusion before Yuka’s brain catches up to what’s going on. Right, the injuries she’s been claiming to have for the past week and a half, because clearly she is only slightly better at cover stories than Fai.

“Oh, sure,” she says. “Healing up perfectly. The doc’s a real miracle worker, right?”

“That’s good,” Azula says, and it sounds like she actually means it. “So you won’t need to be in the infirmary all the time.”

Wait, crap.

Fai jumps in with a save. “Well, but it’s not _totally_ healed, right? Still need those, uh, follow-up visits?”

“Yes, exactly. I’ll still need to see Dr. Jian for the--I mean to make sure things are--”

“--There’s just a lot of medical things--” “--All fine though, just some routine--”

“--Compresses and sutures and that sort of thing--”

The princess’s eyebrows raise. “You required stitches?”

_Thanks a lot, Fai._

“It’s nothing,” Yuka begins, before remembering that she’s been claiming to need medical care for days. “I mean, it _was_ something, but now it’s mostly fine? So there’s really absolutely no reason to worry about it, or talk about it, or think about it at all. ...Weather here sure is nice, huh?”

Way to go, she definitely won’t think there’s anything up with _that_.

Azula furrows her brow. “I should go find Uncle,” she says. “I hope the komodo-rhinos enjoy their candles.”

She turns and heads off down the main street. Yuka waits until she vanishes around a corner to let out a sigh of relief.

“Well _that_ went terribly.”

“We are not good liars,” Fai agrees.

“Nope. And you know you’re gonna have to buy those candles for real now, right?”

“Yup.”

* * *

If Toph never has another conversation about _furoshiki_ , it will be too soon. It felt like they spent hours in that little shop, with Uncle painstakingly going through every single option looking for the absolute best ones. Which, admittedly, is kind of sweet. Except he somehow got it in his head that Toph would know what Azula would like.

Uncle had insisted on describing every single pattern to Toph for her reaction. Would Azula prefer something with cherry blossoms? Maybe a star design? How about waves?

“I really don’t think she cares” had not been a compelling argument despite being entirely true. (Toph _did_ veto the turtleduck pattern though. She’s still not sure why Smoky has such an issue with those things, but it’s definitely not a topic to bring up on her _birthday_.)

Eventually Iroh had settled on a pattern that the shopkeeper agreed was “very pretty,” and Toph was finally free to go find Smoky. She ended up having to go almost back to the dock to find her. Apparently exploring on her own hadn’t been nearly as much fun, because Azula had decided to just go back to the ship. Which would’ve been a waste of a perfectly good day on solid ground.

“Sailor Fai and Sailor Yuka were acting strangely again,” Azula says abruptly as they’re walking back into town.

Toph has to fight back a groan. Those two are the absolute _worst_ at secrecy.

“How can you even tell? All you Fire Nation folks act strange.”

There’s a long pause, probably while Smoky tries to decide if she’s joking or not.

“This is different,” she decides at last.

Toph shrugs. “So they’re being weird. Maybe they bought something embarrassing and they were worried you saw.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, grown-ups are weird. They’ll freak out over anything. Let’s forget about them and go have some fun before we have to leave.”

Azula doesn’t respond right away. When she does, it’s to point out a small vendor selling hats. All of which are sized for adult heads and thus way too large for either of them, but that just makes trying them on more fun.

Later, when they’re back on the ship, Azula invites Toph to join her training session with Rùfen. Toph turns her down with an excuse about Uncle helping her write a letter for home. It’s not a _total_ lie; Uncle is going to be helping her with writing, just not to her parents.

First she takes a quick detour down to the engines to collect up a good bit of coal dust, then goes to join Uncle in his room. He’s in the middle of the floor, attempting to wrap a box in the _furoshiki_.

“Give me one moment,” he says as Toph shuts the door behind her. “I know I’ve seen this done before, and it never _looked_ very hard. But I can’t get it _centered_.”

Toph’s pretty sure Smoky won’t care if the wrapping job on her gift is a little wonky, but by this point she knows that saying so is a waste of time. Instead she hops in the chair at the small writing desk. Paper, ink, and brushes have already been set out.

She unstoppers the ink bottle and begins bending coal dust into it, a little bit at a time, until the ink-to-rock ratio is just right. It’s taken a lot of experimenting, but they’ve found a mix that gives her good visibility without rendering the ink useless. The result isn’t perfect; she still doesn’t see the full, smooth lines that she’s told the ink leaves on paper. But the specks of coal give her a trail to follow. She can see the rough shape of the brush strokes, and as long as the writing isn’t too small she can make out individual characters.

More importantly, she can _copy_ them.

One of the papers already has writing on it, done in large sweeping strokes that are easiest for her to see. She sets this to the side, then grabs a blank sheet and brush and begins to practice. The brush sits awkwardly in her hand, and her lines aren’t nearly as smooth as Uncle’s. But there’s a deep satisfaction in once again doing something everyone always insisted would be impossible for the little blind girl.

“That is much better than last time,” Uncle says, joining her at the desk. “I think it might be time to do this for real.”

“You’re sure she’ll be able to read it?” Her markings are close to what Uncle wrote on the example page, but it’s still just a bunch of lines. Toph’s not sure how that’s supposed to translate into actual _words_.

“I’m certain.” He opens a drawer and pulls out a new sheet of paper, and she knows that this is a higher quality than what she’s been practicing on. They don’t have as much of this available, so she needs to not mess this up.

It’s painstakingly slow, even for just the small handful of characters she needs. Toph can’t imagine the effort it would take to write a whole _letter_. By the time she completes the last stroke she’s decided that there are advantages to not knowing how to read, because it means she won’t have to do this again.

(Well, maybe for Smoky’s next birthday.)

They set the paper aside so the ink can dry properly. They start putting everything away when there’s a knock on the door. Toph taps her foot on the ground and follows the vibrations out beyond the door and into the hall.

“It’s Azula,” she whispers.

He grabs the partially-wrapped box from the middle of the room and stashes it in a drawer. Toph carefully covers the page she was working on, hoping the ink won’t be smudged. She’d hate to have to do all that _again_.

“May I come in?” Smoky asks, because they’re taking way too long to answer the door.

“One moment,” Uncle calls back. He waits until Toph has moved away from the desk before opening the door. “A pleasure to see you, Niece. I didn’t expect your training to be over so soon.”

“Am I interrupting?”

Uncle shakes his head. “Of course not.”

“We actually just finished,” Toph adds.

“Should we take the letter to Doctor Jian then?” Azula asks. “I think he’s getting ready to send a runner to town with other messages that need to be sent.”

“I can take care of that,” Uncle says quickly. “You two should go get some dinner. I hear Koji made fire noodles.”

“Don’t want to be late for that,” Toph agrees. She grabs Smoky by the arm and starts dragging her back out the door. There’s a brief tension before her friend relaxes and allows herself to be led off down the hall.

“I didn’t know you liked fire noodles this much,” Azula observes.

“Just hungry I guess. How’d training go?”

She feels Azula shrug. “I still need to improve. You have ink on your hand.”

“What?” Toph looks down, and sure enough there’s a swipe of coal dust there. Whoops. “Oh, I guess I must’ve leaned against the desk without thinking,” she lies.

Azula doesn’t say anything else until after they’ve gotten trays of food from the mess and gone back to their room.

“Your parents must be happy to get so many letters,” she says.

“Hmf?” Toph answers, because her mouth is too full to talk.

“You and Uncle Iroh have been writing a lot of them,” Azula clarifies.

Ah. Right.

Toph swallows. “Well we don’t always do the whole thing in one sitting.”

“Oh.” A pause. “I’m just surprised you’ve found so much to say. Nothing’s really happened in the last few weeks?”

She’s right. The last _actual_ letter Toph wrote home has only taken Uncle a few minutes to write down. There really wasn’t much going on to tell her folks about. But she can’t exactly admit that right now, so instead she goes with the first thing that comes to mind.

“I’ve been telling them about my metalbending. Trying to explain the technique so Master Yu can try it. And since I’m not there to show him it’s got to be _really_ detailed.”

Now that she says it, that’s probably not a bad idea, actually. She might need to talk to Uncle about doing that for real. Heck, she could start a whole _school_ of metalbenders.

Azula seems to accept this answer. Or, at least, she doesn’t press the subject. It’s hard to say if her silence through the rest of the meal is the usual amount of Smoky Being Quiet, or if there’s more to it. Knowing her, it’s totally possible she’s just fixating on some minor training mistake where her foot was a hair’s breadth to the left of where it was supposed to be.

That seems to be confirmed when Azula turns down Toph’s suggestion of a game of Go to instead practice drills on deck. Which is kind of disappointing because Toph’s _pretty sure_ she’d win this time, but it does mean she’s free to go check on some of the other party preparations. And maybe find out what in Koh’s lair happened with Fai and Yuka earlier.

She figures she can kill two birds with one boulder by going to the infirmary. Instead of Yuka, though, she finds Rùfen and Jian talking in hushed tones.

“Everything alright?” Jian asks. “Should I be expecting Azula?”

“Nah, Smoky just wanted to go do some more training, so I figured I’d see how the prep is going.”

“We already did training today,” Rùfen says. “I even put her through a few more exercises than usual. She should be resting now.”

Toph shrugs. “She said something about her footwork not being good enough.”

“I see. In that case, I think I need to go have a talk with the General.” There’s something far too serious in her tone, and it gives Toph the distinct feeling that she is missing something very important here.

* * *

Toph is lying in bed later that night when Azula finally comes back to their room. She drops a hand to touch the metal bed frame, the vibrations rippling down the posts and out across the floor until she has a view of the whole room.

Azula hesitates in the doorway. “You’re still awake.”

“So are you,” Toph points out.

Azula closes the door, but doesn’t move further into the room. She’s standing totally still, the way she does when she thinks she needs to examine her next action from every possible angle before taking it. Like she thinks something terrible will happen if she says or does the wrong thing.

“You know you can just say it,” Toph prompts.

“What?”

“Whatever it is you’re thinking? You can just say it out loud. You don’t have to turn it over in your head a hundred times first. It’s just me here.”

“...You lied to me.”

What? Toph sits up in bed, because this is not where she thought the conversation might go _at all_.

“I spoke to Uncle Iroh,” Azula continues. “He explained why everyone has been acting strange. And not telling me things.”

Oh.

“It was supposed to be a nice surprise.”

“Being misled is nice?”

Well when she puts it _that_ way. “I guess not? But that’s not the point. We weren’t lying to be _mean_. Surprise parties are supposed to be more fun, and you deserve a fun birthday.”

Except Toph is now realizing that Azula grew up surrounded by people she couldn’t trust, and now _they’ve_ broken her trust, and how did any of them think this was a good idea? Uncle clearly had the same realization if he told Azula what was going on.

And now that she’s really thinking about it, Toph can see that there were signs all along that this wasn’t going to end well. Smoky had tried to _tell_ Toph that she was getting worried-- _actually_ worried--about everyone’s behavior, but Toph had brushed it off. Sand and silt, was she really that terrible of a friend?

“That’s what Uncle Iroh said. He called it a ‘well-intentioned mistake’, and said I should try not to be angry with everyone.”

“...Are you?”

Azula doesn’t answer right away. There’s a knot forming in the pit of Toph’s stomach, and it grows tighter as the silence stretches on. Because she’s been a bad friend, and Smoky probably _should_ be mad at her. But the silence means that this isn’t the easy kind of mad that gets solved by just telling the person they’re being a jerk. This isn’t like when Toph got dirt in the bed and so Azula threw all the blankets _and_ Toph onto the floor.

Toph doesn’t quite know _what_ this is, but it’s bad, and she doesn’t like what it might mean for their friendship.

“I didn’t think you would lie to me,” Azula says. It’s not exactly an answer, and does nothing to relax the twisted feeling in Toph’s gut.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. But...yeah, I guess I was being kind of a crap friend,” Toph admits. She doesn’t want to ask the next question, but she needs to know. And Toph has always believed that problems should be tackled head-on. “ _Are_ we still friends?”

She hears Azula’s breathing hitch, feels her heartbeat speed up.

“I don’t understand.”

“Because you’re mad at me?”

“And that means we aren’t friends?” Her heart is racing even faster now.

“Well, do you still want to be?”

For once, Smoky doesn’t hesitate to reply.

“Yes.”

The knot in Toph’s stomach finally unclenches. She falls back onto the pillow with a sigh of relief. “Don’t _scare_ me like that, Smoky.”

“Does this mean we’re still friends?”

“Of course we are.”

Azula’s stance relaxes, her heart finally slowing back down to a normal pace. After a moment she finally comes the rest of the way into the room and starts her nighttime routine. Toph takes this as a sign that they’ve hopefully moved past the worst of this debacle.

Except they can’t just move past this. Not yet. Because it happened once, so it could happen again. And Toph doesn’t want another dumb mistake to jeapordize their friendship like this.

Azula must be thinking the same thing. “I don’t want to ever be mad enough to stop being friends.”

“Me either.”

There’s another pause while Azula works out what to say. This time, though, the rest of her isn’t frozen in place the way she gets when she’s afraid of saying the wrong thing, so Toph doesn’t try to break her out of it.

“I don’t like that you lied,” Azula says at last.

If that came from anyone but Smoky, Toph would have to laugh at such an obvious statement. But coming from Azula? She knows there’s a lot more behind those words than what’s on the surface. Azula doesn’t talk about her feelings. She doesn’t prioritize her own wants or needs, and she doesn’t expect anyone else to, either.

So this? Toph’s not going to ignore this.

“How about we make a deal,” Toph says. “No more keeping secrets, or lying, or any of that dumb stuff. From now on we can always trust each other one hundred percent, no matter what. Deal?”

“Deal. ...Did Uncle Iroh really teach you how to write ‘happy birthday Smoky’?”

“Yes, and it was _terrible_. You can keep all those Court Huǒzi lessons for yourself, because I do _not_ want to go through that again. Writing is _dumb_.”

There’s a small huff of laughter from Azula. “I’m not actually tired yet,” she says.

“Yeah, I’m not really either.”

Azula opens a drawer and pulls out the Go set. “We could play a game?”

Toph grins. “I hope you’re prepared to lose, Smoky.”

Azula does not, in fact, end up losing. It turns out Toph _still_ isn’t very good at Go.

But that’s okay, because suddenly losing to Azula doesn’t seem so bad.


End file.
